The Virgin Suicides is a film that takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions. Directed by Sofia Coppola, the film goes into the lives of the Lisbon family and find out what happened. The film starts out with Cecilia, the youngest of the five sisters in a bathtub. It appears that she is dead from cutting her wrist but the ambulance comes and saves her. After that the doctor recommends that Cecilia become more social. Now this was a great feat to overcome because Mrs. Lisbon was like a prison warden. During the film I actually wondered if prison would be better that living in that house. But surprisingly Mrs. Lisbon let the girls have a party in the basement. The party started off very awkward but it soon began to pick up and when it did Cecilia asked to be excused. It was easy to see that she did not want this party and non of her emotions had changed. So, she left the party and walked upstairs. Shortly after there was a loud thud sound from outside. Cecilia had jumped out a window onto one of the spikes of a fence in their front yard. The neighborhood tries to help the family by sending flowered and ripping out the fence that Cecilia landed on.Everyone in the family tries to get back into their normal lives and forget about what happened to their sister. Mr. Lisbon jumps back into his job as a school math teacher and the rest of the girls try and forget but everyone at school knows what happened. But the prettiest sister Lux, meets the most desirable guy in the school and he invites himself over to their house to watch T.V. with the family. Trip Fontaine spent the night awkwardly sitting next to Mrs. Lisbon and only occasionally got a glimpse of Lux's feet. The night ended and Trip sat in his car reviewing the night failure but Lux's ran out and started kissing him. Trip really liked Lux and wanted to ask her to homecoming, so he asked Mr. Lisbon for approval. But he denies and says it would be unfair to change the rules because the older girls had to follow them. So Trip comes up with the idea to take all of the sisters, the football team is going to take them. This idea gets approved by Mrs. Lisbon surprisingly given her dictator ways. the night comes and the girls are all ready for their night. The three boys from the football team that Trip and chosen are seemingly respectable kids. The night progresses and Trip and Lux are voted king and queen after that they are nowhere to be found. They made their way to the football field and got a little handsy. The first of the Lisbon girls were taken home by their dates and Lux was nowhere to be found. She woke up on the field and Trip was nowhere to be found and by this time it was early morning. So Lux took a cab home and was yelled at by Mrs. Lisbon. After that whole incident the girls were taken out of school and put on house arrest. Over the next few months the Lisbon house deteriorates and not a single person is seen leaving the house. But as spring comes around a few men come to cut down a tree in their front yard and all the girls come running out and circle around the tree. This was the first time anyone had seen them in months. The boys who are the ones telling this story start receiving notes from the girls and engage in phone calls in which they exchange music. The boys received one final note, the note asked for their help. When they got to the Lisbon house Lux was smoking in the living room and instructed the boys to wait there for the other girls as she walked into the garage and started the car. The boys get suspicious and start exploring the house and discover that all the girls had killed themselves. The character development throughout this film was pretty obvious, at the beginning of the film it was Cecilia because she tried to kill herself twice and succeeded on the second attempt. The other sisters were not as pretty or as outgoing as Lux so she was seemingly the next main focus of the film. Lux seemed to be the most interesting of the five sister, she was always getting attention from boys, always trying new things, and she was the most outgoing of the bunch. I think that one of the biggest factors in the film was color. Throughout there was always a somewhat darker color scheme that set the mood for what was about to come. Even when you look at all the girls dresses from the homecoming dance. They all wore white, I think that represents that they are pure. Once thing I noticed was that whenever something bad was going to happen the lighting of the scenes beforehand got really dark, foreshadowing what was about to come. "Sofia Coppola’s slim but remarkably cohesive five-feature filmography has established a signature shot: the window gaze" (Koski). This shot was used many times throughout the film. It shows a sense of entrapment, which is what happened to these girls. Their mother trapped them under many rules and they just watched the world outside through the glass window. Another use of the camera that I believed was amazing, was the still shots that were used. They really helped the view understand the timeframe of this situation because you could see the house and yard deteriorate. I think this was a good film overall because it wasn't your conventional film. It was told from the people who saw things happen first hand and were actually somewhat involved in these girls lives. I think that the root cause was Mrs. Lisbon, she was crazy and controlling. the girls might as well have been in a prison. I would definitely watch another film like this.
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AuthorI normally only watch comedies and action movies so this should be an interesting change. Archives
May 2017
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